Malaysia Airlines MH370 disappearance highlights radar deficiencies

Updated
Sat 22 Mar 2014, 1:11 PM AEDT

Photo

The pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit of an Airbus 315.

ABC News: Sarah Clark

The ease with which Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared from radar systems illustrates an uncomfortable paradox in modern aviation: state-of-the-art airplanes rely on ageing ground infrastructure to tell them where to go.

While satellites shape almost every aspect of modern life, the use of radar and radio in the cockpit has, for many pilots, changed little since before the jet engine was first flown.

Even though Malaysia suspects someone may have hidden its tracks, the inability of 26 nations to find a 250-tonne Boeing 777 has shocked an increasingly connected world and exposed flaws in the use of radar, which fades over oceans and deserts.

"It's not very accurate. The world's moved a bit further along," said Don Thoma, president of Aireon, a venture launched by US-based mobile satellite communications company Iridium and the Canadian air traffic control authority in 2012 to offer space-based tracking of planes.

"We track our cars, we track our kids' cell phones, but we can't track airplanes when they are over oceans or other remote areas."

Satellites provide the obvious answer, experts say.

"The way to go is satellite-based navigation and communication. In navigation, we need to get away from ground-based radar and in communications we need to get away from radios," radar expert and aviation consultant Hans Weber said.

Overhaul of current systems would be costly

Inefficiencies caused by radar are costing travellers money through increased fares and penalising economies through extra delays, according to those who back an ambitious but potentially costly overhaul of the world's major aviation routes.

"Since controllers use voice communication, they have to leave more space between planes because of the risk of losing contact," said Mr Weber, who heads TECOP International, a US-based consultancy.

Two mammoth proposals for new airspace systems in the United States and European Union could change all that, with hefty profits at stake for aerospace firms on both sides of the Atlantic, though critics say the schemes are wasteful and late.

The US aerospace industry has been pressing for years for a $US40 billion overhaul of air traffic control systems, but the cost and complexity of the undertaking have slowed the effort and Congress has cut funding repeatedly.

Europe, which has some of the world's busiest skies with an estimated 33,000 flights a day, has ambitious plans through the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR).

This research program aims to triple airspace capacity, halve air traffic management costs and revamp Europe's infrastructure by 2020.

A 2011 McKinsey study said implementing SESAR could boost EU gross domestic product by 419 billion euros from 2013 to 2030, create 328,000 jobs and cut flight times by 10 per cent.

This project, too, has been beset by delays due to friction over the control of airspace and Europe's debt crisis.

Airbus, Thales and Honeywell are involved in the scheme. Some controllers' unions oppose the plan.

Canadian company FLYHT Aerospace Solutions has developed a satellite and internet-based system that is used by 40 operators such as airlines and business jet operators to monitor aircraft systems, map flight paths, provide voice communications, and on-demand streaming of black box data.

Richard Hayden, a company director, said the system could serve as a back-up for navigational systems since it also provides GPS tracking, cockpit voice, data and text via Iridium satellites.

However, he said the system would not meet all the specific navigation requirements now spelled out for next-generation air traffic control systems.

Broken high-frequency radio communications

For decades air traffic controllers, working at their radar screens and using clipped radio communications with pilots, helped planes to thread their way through increasingly crowded airspace and maintain a low industry accident record.

These included crackly high-frequency links over stretches of ocean like the busy North Atlantic, where pilots try to report at regular intervals or pass messages via other jets.

On such routes planes equipped with satellite communications now increasingly use a messaging system called CPDLC to establish a data link with controllers, several pilots said.

Using the same system, they can request changes in altitude too.

But it is not yet standard and the system needs airlines to pay for satellite service, something not all are willing to do.

Malaysian Airlines had not signed up for satellite service on the jet which disappeared on March 8, complicating efforts to track the missing aircraft.

Malaysian officials have not ruled out technical problems with the jet.

Simply providing the connectivity is not enough, however, and this is one reason the cockpit is moving into the digital age at a slower pace than the smart phones of their passengers.

"It has got to be super-reliable and secure. You can't rely on any system that has a failure rate that would be perfectly acceptable for a cellphone in say 1 in 100 call," Mr Weber said.